Three Emperor’s League: was an unstable alliance between Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary and Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated an agreement between the monarchs of Austria–Hungary, Russia and Germany. The alliance sought to resurrect the Holy Alliance of 1815 and act as a bulwark against radical sentiments the conservative rulers found unsettling. It was preceded by the Schönbrunn Convention signed by Russia and Austria–Hungary on 6 June 1873.
Black Hand- A secret military organization that was formed in 1901 which aimed at Serbian reunification. A member of the society assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian throne in June of 1914 in Sarajevo which served as a catalyst to the World War.
Triple Entente: The alliance of Great Britain, France, and Russia in the First World War.
Trench warfare - A type of fighting used in WWI behind rows of trenches, mines, and barbed wire; the cost in lives was staggering and the gains in territory minimal.
Lusitania- briefly the world's biggest ship (prior to the launch of her running mate Mauretania and her White Star Line rivals RMS Olympic, RMS Titanic and HMHS Britannic). She was launched by the Cunard Line in 1907, at a time of fierce competition for the North Atlantic trade. In 1915 she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, with heavy loss of life.
Total war - A war in which distinctions between the soldiers on the battlefield and civilians at home are blurred, and where the government plans and controls economic social life in order to supply the armies at the front with supplies and weapons.
War Raw Materials Board- Masterminded by Walter Rathenau, this was set up by the German government to ration and distribute raw materials.
League of Nations- was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.
Petrograd Soviet:was the soviet (workers' council) in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), Russia, established in March 1917 after the February Revolution as the representative body of the city's workers. The Petrograd Soviet became important during the Russian Revolution leading up to the October Revolution as a rival power center to the Provisional Government.
Army Order No. 1:was the first official decree of The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.
The order instructed soldiers and sailors to obey their officers and the Provisional Government only if their orders did not contradict the decrees of the Petrograd Soviet. It also called on units to elect representatives to the Soviet and for each unit to elect a committee which would run the unit. All weapons were to be handed over to these committees "and shall by no means be issued to the officers, not even at their insistence." The order also allowed soldiers to dispense with standing to attention and saluting when off duty, although while on duty strict military discipline was to be maintained. Officers were no longer to be addressed as "Your Excellency" but rather as "Sir" ("Gospodin", in Russian). Soldiers of all ranks were to be addressed formally (with "vy" instead of "ty").
Bolsheviks - Lenin's radical, revolutionary arm of the Russian party of Marxian socialism, which successfully installed a dictatorial socialist regime in Russia
Constituent Assembly: an assembly set up for a specific purpose, which it carries out in a relatively short time, after which the assembly is dissolved.
War communism: the application of centralized state control during the Russian civil war, in which the Bolsheviks seized grain from peasants, introduced rationing, nationalized all banks and industry, and required everyone to work.
Cheka:was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created on December 20, 1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky
Treaty of Versailles:was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I were dealt with in separate treaties. Although the armistice signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919, and was printed in The League of Nations Treaty Series.
Balfour Declaration:letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
Nicholas II- The last czar of Russia (1894-1917), whose reign was marked by defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), the 1905 Revolution, the court influence of the unpopular Rasputin, involvement in World War I, and governmental incompetence, all of which helped precipitate the Revolution of 1917. Forced to abdicate, he and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.
Revolution of 1905:a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Emprie. This led to establishment of constitutional monarchy, the state duma of the Russian Empire,the multi party system, and the russian constitution of 1906.
October Manifesto: addressed the unrest application throughout the Russian Empire and pledged to grant basic civil liberties, including personal immunity; and freedom of assembly, association, press, religion, and speech
Vladimir Lenin: A Russian leader that studied Marxist socialism that won converts among radical intellectuals while industrialization surged forward in Russia during the 1890s. He had three concepts that were central to him.
1) he stressed that only violent revolution could destroy capitalism
2) he argued that under certain conditions a socialist revolution was possible even in a nonindustrialized agrarian country like Russia
3) he believed that the possibility of revolution was determined more by human leadership than by vast historical laws
He also created a camp called the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks were the majority group in government while the Mensheviks were the minority. After the February Revolution, Lenin was let back into Russia from exile to Switzerland because the Germans wanted him to disband Russian forces so Germans were only fighting a one front war. Kerensky came into the prime minister role after Lenin went into hiding in July of 1917.
Mensheviks- a Russian member of the liberal minority group that advocated gradual reform and opposed the Bolsheviks before and during the Russian Revolution.
Leon Trotsky:a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.
February Revolution - These were unplanned uprisings that were accompanied by violent street demonstrations that begun in Russia's February (our March) in 1917. They occurred in Petrograd, Russia and it lead to the abdication of the tsar and the establishment of the provisional government. The Revolution was when patriotic upper and middle classes as well as the working classes gathered in Petrograd to protest Russia's involvement in the war. The tsar, Nicholas II ordered the Russian army to open fire on the citizens who were not disbanding the protest but instead of shooting the protestors they joined them, giving the tsar practically no more power.
Rasputin:A debauched adventurer and self-proclaimed holy man who took over the Russian government alongside Tsarina Alexandra after Nicholas II traveled to the front line to rally Russia's armies. He was an uneducated, Siberian preacher known as "our friend Grigori". He began his career with a sect known for mixing sexual orgies with religious ecstasies, and his influence rested on mysterious healing powers. He was greatly trusted by Alexandra because he seemed to be the only one who could stop the bleeding of her daughter, Alexis, who suffered from hemophilia. As a result, he caused farther weakening of the government and created a national scandal which impaired the governments appearance. Eventually he finally died after surviving gun shot wounds, beatings, and being thrown into a river in a bag. he was a strange man.
Provisional Government: was established after the february revolution (really occurred in march). after generations of autocracy, the provisional government established equality before the law, freedom of religion, speech, and assembly, and the right of unions to organize and strike. was favored by the upper class because the war effort would increase, and was favored by the lower class because the tsar is finally gone, better wages, food, and given liberty and democracy. the provisional government made more political changes than social, and their major downfall was desire to keep fighting the war.
April Theses - enacted by Lenin in april 1917 when he returns from his exile. upon his return, he promises the people three important things... "peace, land, and bread"
October Revolution: Is part of the larger Russian Revolution, followed and capitalized on the February Revolution it overthrew the provisional government and gave power to the local soviets dominated by the Bolsheviks. This revolution was not recognized outside of Petrograd the Russian civil war and the creation of the soviet union followed.
Red Army:army formed by trotsky which prevailed against the whites because of his leadership. they were disciplined (abandonment of army by soldiers was treated by death), and trotsky gave army officers total power over troops = allowing the red's to be effective and efficient, defeating the whites numerous times.
Reds: supporters of communism and the Bolsheviks, formed to eliminate opposition caused by the whites, led by trotsky. composed of soldiers and army officials, many times joined due to drafts.
Whites: people who had supported self rule noticed again they were getting dictatorship from the capital. the officers of the old army rejected the peace treaty and instead organized the WHITE, which was opposition to the bolsheviks in southern russia, ukraine, and siberai and west of petrograd. the whites came from many social groups, and were united only by their hatred of communism and the bolsheviks
Black Hand- A secret military organization that was formed in 1901 which aimed at Serbian reunification. A member of the society assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian throne in June of 1914 in Sarajevo which served as a catalyst to the World War.
Triple Entente: The alliance of Great Britain, France, and Russia in the First World War.
Trench warfare - A type of fighting used in WWI behind rows of trenches, mines, and barbed wire; the cost in lives was staggering and the gains in territory minimal.
Lusitania- briefly the world's biggest ship (prior to the launch of her running mate Mauretania and her White Star Line rivals RMS Olympic, RMS Titanic and HMHS Britannic). She was launched by the Cunard Line in 1907, at a time of fierce competition for the North Atlantic trade. In 1915 she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, with heavy loss of life.
Total war - A war in which distinctions between the soldiers on the battlefield and civilians at home are blurred, and where the government plans and controls economic social life in order to supply the armies at the front with supplies and weapons.
War Raw Materials Board- Masterminded by Walter Rathenau, this was set up by the German government to ration and distribute raw materials.
League of Nations- was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.
Petrograd Soviet: was the soviet (workers' council) in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), Russia, established in March 1917 after the February Revolution as the representative body of the city's workers. The Petrograd Soviet became important during the Russian Revolution leading up to the October Revolution as a rival power center to the Provisional Government.
Army Order No. 1: was the first official decree of The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.
The order instructed soldiers and sailors to obey their officers and the Provisional Government only if their orders did not contradict the decrees of the Petrograd Soviet. It also called on units to elect representatives to the Soviet and for each unit to elect a committee which would run the unit. All weapons were to be handed over to these committees "and shall by no means be issued to the officers, not even at their insistence." The order also allowed soldiers to dispense with standing to attention and saluting when off duty, although while on duty strict military discipline was to be maintained. Officers were no longer to be addressed as "Your Excellency" but rather as "Sir" ("Gospodin", in Russian). Soldiers of all ranks were to be addressed formally (with "vy" instead of "ty").
Bolsheviks - Lenin's radical, revolutionary arm of the Russian party of Marxian socialism, which successfully installed a dictatorial socialist regime in Russia
Constituent Assembly: an assembly set up for a specific purpose, which it carries out in a relatively short time, after which the assembly is dissolved.
War communism: the application of centralized state control during the Russian civil war, in which the Bolsheviks seized grain from peasants, introduced rationing, nationalized all banks and industry, and required everyone to work.
Cheka: was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created on December 20, 1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky
Treaty of Versailles: was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I were dealt with in separate treaties. Although the armistice signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919, and was printed in The League of Nations Treaty Series.
Balfour Declaration: letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
Nicholas II- The last czar of Russia (1894-1917), whose reign was marked by defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), the 1905 Revolution, the court influence of the unpopular Rasputin, involvement in World War I, and governmental incompetence, all of which helped precipitate the Revolution of 1917. Forced to abdicate, he and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.
Revolution of 1905: a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Emprie. This led to establishment of constitutional monarchy, the state duma of the Russian Empire,the multi party system, and the russian constitution of 1906.
October Manifesto: addressed the unrest application throughout the Russian Empire and pledged to grant basic civil liberties, including personal immunity; and freedom of assembly, association, press, religion, and speech
Vladimir Lenin: A Russian leader that studied Marxist socialism that won converts among radical intellectuals while industrialization surged forward in Russia during the 1890s. He had three concepts that were central to him.
1) he stressed that only violent revolution could destroy capitalism
2) he argued that under certain conditions a socialist revolution was possible even in a nonindustrialized agrarian country like Russia
3) he believed that the possibility of revolution was determined more by human leadership than by vast historical laws
He also created a camp called the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks were the majority group in government while the Mensheviks were the minority. After the February Revolution, Lenin was let back into Russia from exile to Switzerland because the Germans wanted him to disband Russian forces so Germans were only fighting a one front war. Kerensky came into the prime minister role after Lenin went into hiding in July of 1917.
Mensheviks- a Russian member of the liberal minority group that advocated gradual reform and opposed the Bolsheviks before and during the Russian Revolution.
Leon Trotsky: a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.
February Revolution - These were unplanned uprisings that were accompanied by violent street demonstrations that begun in Russia's February (our March) in 1917. They occurred in Petrograd, Russia and it lead to the abdication of the tsar and the establishment of the provisional government. The Revolution was when patriotic upper and middle classes as well as the working classes gathered in Petrograd to protest Russia's involvement in the war. The tsar, Nicholas II ordered the Russian army to open fire on the citizens who were not disbanding the protest but instead of shooting the protestors they joined them, giving the tsar practically no more power.
Rasputin: A debauched adventurer and self-proclaimed holy man who took over the Russian government alongside Tsarina Alexandra after Nicholas II traveled to the front line to rally Russia's armies. He was an uneducated, Siberian preacher known as "our friend Grigori". He began his career with a sect known for mixing sexual orgies with religious ecstasies, and his influence rested on mysterious healing powers. He was greatly trusted by Alexandra because he seemed to be the only one who could stop the bleeding of her daughter, Alexis, who suffered from hemophilia. As a result, he caused farther weakening of the government and created a national scandal which impaired the governments appearance. Eventually he finally died after surviving gun shot wounds, beatings, and being thrown into a river in a bag. he was a strange man.
Provisional Government: was established after the february revolution (really occurred in march). after generations of autocracy, the provisional government established equality before the law, freedom of religion, speech, and assembly, and the right of unions to organize and strike. was favored by the upper class because the war effort would increase, and was favored by the lower class because the tsar is finally gone, better wages, food, and given liberty and democracy. the provisional government made more political changes than social, and their major downfall was desire to keep fighting the war.
April Theses - enacted by Lenin in april 1917 when he returns from his exile. upon his return, he promises the people three important things... "peace, land, and bread"
October Revolution: Is part of the larger Russian Revolution, followed and capitalized on the February Revolution it overthrew the provisional government and gave power to the local soviets dominated by the Bolsheviks. This revolution was not recognized outside of Petrograd the Russian civil war and the creation of the soviet union followed.
Red Army: army formed by trotsky which prevailed against the whites because of his leadership. they were disciplined (abandonment of army by soldiers was treated by death), and trotsky gave army officers total power over troops = allowing the red's to be effective and efficient, defeating the whites numerous times.
Reds: supporters of communism and the Bolsheviks, formed to eliminate opposition caused by the whites, led by trotsky. composed of soldiers and army officials, many times joined due to drafts.
Whites: people who had supported self rule noticed again they were getting dictatorship from the capital. the officers of the old army rejected the peace treaty and instead organized the WHITE, which was opposition to the bolsheviks in southern russia, ukraine, and siberai and west of petrograd. the whites came from many social groups, and were united only by their hatred of communism and the bolsheviks